King v Mejias

The much-anticipated debate yesterday between Rep. Peter King of Long Island and his Democratic challenger Dave Mejias is online over here. Warning. It’s an hour long. But it’s also worth watching, at least for a couple of minutes, if you’re at all interested in this stuff.

Like the Times wrote today, most Republicans have done an about-face on the idea of campaigning on Iraq. King, as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, doesn’t have that option, and doesn’t sound like he’d want to take it if he could.

Quick highlights:

Mejias, around the 3:20 mark:

“Five years later, after September 11th, we still have not hunted down and killed Bin Laden. That’s a crime.”

King talks about Iraq around the 4:45 mark:

“There are parts of the country that are stable. There are parts of the country that are deadly…I was on a convoy along the highway when a bomb went off. A bomb went off [and I] was almost killed. Then we went through the city and the city was perfectly stable. It shows how dangerous it is and how stable it is at the same time.”